


Laying On of Hands

by euphorbic



Series: Angel of Cities [7]
Category: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Action, Blood, Canonical Character Death, Gratuitous Imagery, M/M, Metaphysical warfare, Non-Linear Narrative, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 03:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3472847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euphorbic/pseuds/euphorbic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Supported by only three mutants in his battle against Shaw's powerful Angel, Erik finds himself losing the fight yet again. Meanwhile, Charles, Kitty, and Anne Marie wait for an opening in the Alexandrian's defenses.</p><p>[Ends very differently than the tumblr version.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Laying On of Hands

**Author's Note:**

> This ends differently than the tumblr version and that makes a gigantic difference. Also, it's cleaned up and now in present tense.

The Alexandrian’s wings are obliterated with the force of Erik’s strike. They blow back and liquid feathers splash back across Shaw. The man’s expression changes from smug condescension to annoyance as the blood hits and cascades over him. Blood-feathers soak into his Prince of Wales checked suit, bisect his face, and stripe his pants.

Those that don’t hit Sebastian swirl past as in a directed current. The feathers collide, clot, and reform in new shapes. They look vaguely like hundreds of smaller, stylized wings and tumble through the air in newly sinuous movements. The flock of small wings divides to the left and right and arcs around the Great Hall’s cinnabar pillars.

The chaotic Power’s head bows forward, his hands make swift circular pushing motions toward Erik, Charles, and the two women. In response, the bloody wings fly forward, moving in the same circular motions, converging from two different direction on Charles’ group.

Face a mask of concentration, Erik diverts half his dimethyl mercury swarm from the attack on the Alexandrian and Sebastian. Baring his teeth against the brunt of the force the Power has kept trained on him, he sends his small agents to blast into as many of the bloody missiles as possible.

Through their bond, Charles knows what Erik’s thinking; the dimethylmercury will readily be absorbed by blood. The question is who will control the resulting fusion. Nevertheless, Erik’s diverted force is still outnumbered two-to-one, so Charles and Anne Marie stay huddled behind him. Kitty stands apart, her body already transparent.

The small wings hurtle closer and Erik’s swarm punches into them in bursts of liquid silver and red. Those hit, stop and boil midair. Those unchallenged come on. Many were obliterated in the crossfire maintained between he and the Alexandrian, the rest hit Erik across the chest, face, and shoulders with the sound and appearance of wet leaves.

Blinded momentarily, a few pass by and splatter against Charles and Anne Marie’s legs and against their shielding arms. The blood doesn’t hurt, nor drip, but it slowly seeps into their clothing. At close range, Charles sees they aren’t shaped like wings, but hand prints.

Bemused by the lack of pain or feeling the prints cause, Charles presses his consciousness into the periphery of Erik’s thoughts to discover what the bloody hand prints are doing to him. What he finds is massive confusion.

The blood his swarm has infiltrated is boiling and shaking apart in the air in stutters and waves. Some split apart; Erik’s beetles fly backwards out of the hands, but the prints themselves come on right after. Two more prints take Erik in the chest, prompting a look of confusion, another hits Anne Marie across the face as she looks up from her crouch.

Erik is losing Equilibrium, the link with Bashan is the only thing that ties his mind to the physical world and time. Without that sense, Erik can’t function properly. The Alexandrian has always known Erik’s weakness and Charles suspects his blood is infiltrating Erik’s swarm just as much as the reverse.

Placing his hands on Erik’s shoulders, Charles pushes harder into Erik’s mind.  _Attune with me. Attune with my body’s circadian rhythm. It will help keep you Calibrated with Bashan._

 _Charles…_ Erik replies, his voice buzzing and growing increasingly dissonant.  _Get the blood off. I can’t think; ------’s Confounding me._

 _How do I get them off?_  Charles replies, but then he knows, because Erik shares the knowledge with him. The blood can be pulled off; it will peel back. Coming through Erik’s force had limited it that much. All the same, as Charles begins to tear the hand prints from Erik’s face, he can feel them burn his Power.

“Kitty, help me peel them off,” Charles shouts over his shoulder.

Kitty looks at him in confusion. When she shouts back, Charles doesn’t understand a word.

“Confounding! Fuck!” That’s what it meant when the Alexandrian Confounded someone! It was like something straight out of the Tower of Babel. Fortunately for Charles his telepathy seemed to be completely unaffected. Without asking, he opens Kitty’s mind and shows her a scene of her pulling the hands off Erik.

She shudders at the invasion, but springs forward to rip the blood from Erik’s chest. He shows Anne Marie the same image next, since she’s gained handprints all over her body. They can’t communicate any other way.

The blood peels up like particularly difficult to remove swaths of rubber cement and leave hand-shaped bruises on everyone’s skin. The more they remove, the more stable Charles feels Erik’s mind become, the less reliant on Charles’ circadian rhythm he is, and the easier the other hand prints come off.

Erik regains full control of his compromised swarm by the time most of the prints are ripped away from his body. They shed the blood they absorbed in a whir of wings. The blood loses it’s liquid form and flies apart; ashes in the turbulent air.

The handprints on Charles’ and Anne Marie lose grip along their edges and flutter with the breeze the conflicting attacks engender.

 _It’s enough_ , Erik sent.

He has control back, but Erik’s eyes lose focus, the blue and green fade and leave galvanized steel in their wake. The bloody hand prints remaining on his clothes and skin lift and flutter weakly up, like crazed butterflies. They shudder out of time with the magnetic field rippling across his skin. The edges of the red prints no longer seep into his skin, but they’re remain anchored like tattoos across his flesh.

Erik takes several steps forward, pushing into the Alexandrian’s onslaught. His hands shake and his arms flicker down to his biceps. The stuttering grows more severe as it reaches toward his hands. His fingertips become more absent than present.

The Alexandrian iss solid as the day Charles met him, but looks less ethereal without the blood wings. The graceful dance of his hair is a two-dimensional banner of wind-blown black. It whips behind him as his force blows back from the renewed efforts of the dimethylmercury swarm. Just one is enough to kill Shaw or the Power’s body.

However, even as the Power’s force blows back around him, so do Erik’s swarm. Their legs, wings, and delicate antennae splash back into beads of organic metal. They lose cohesion completely centimeters from the discordant Power’s face and only reform when they reach Erik again.

So far, none of the deadly swarm have come anywhere near Charles, Kitty, or Anne Marie.

Charles’ helps Anne Marie rip the last of the hand prints from her body, careful to grip them by their flapping edges. He doesn’t want to ruin their chances with any accidental contact with her skin. 

 _Are you ladies ready?_  He asks and receives serious nods from both woman and girl. At the periphery of his mind, he feel Erik’s weakening assent, and transmits it to the other two. The whole endeavor depends on timing: Charles’ ability to communicate the timing needed to prevent Anne Marie and Kitty from getting killed and his ability keep Erik attuned to time itself.

Kitty wraps her arms around Anne Marie and the two fade as Kitty works her magic. Keeping himself a firm bridge between Erik and Kitty, Charles signals Erik to throw everything he has at the Alexandrian. Erik’s mouth opens and he roars and throws himself forward even further; a shockwave rockets forth, obliterating bloody hands to red mist, even representatives of his own Swarm. Simultaneously, Kitty brings herself just substantial enough for Erik to grab.

In one swift movement, Erik seizes Kitty and Anne Marie and throws them with all his power, sending the two straight on a collision course for the Alexandrian.

The Alexandrian bows back under the pressure of Erik’s strongest attack and though he sees the girls coming straight at him, there’s little Charles thinks he can do except try to turn them back with his counterattack. But, as they hoped, the Alexandrian’s counterattack doesn’t affect Kitty or Anne Marie in full phase. The two collide with him head on.

And pass through.

Anne Marie takes Shaw full in the face with her bare hands leading and while they both scream in psychic violation, it is Kitty who buries herself and Shaw’s bellow down in the granite of The International Library’s floor. A moment later, the Alexandrian’s scream shatters more glass and from the floor Kitty rises alone.


End file.
